Thumbs Down
by TNTCrash
Summary: Boone and the courier strike Cottonwood Cove and Caesar's fort. Each has their own reason for fighting, but at what point is the cost for fighting too much?


**Author's Note: **Recently, I've been trying to get back into writing. I've also been playing New vegas again, so the two collided with this piece. I know the idea is not exactly original, but right now I just needed something to write. Tell me what you think please.

* * *

Boone lay prone on the cold ground of the desert, peering through the scope of the .50 calibre anti-materiel rifle. The shoulder was pressed against his shoulder as his thumb slowly brushed over the bolt action over and over. The night was cold, and the moon, just barely out of its new phase, did not cast much light over the Mojave Wasteland.

He grunted, getting impatient, a rarity for him since he was a sniper. He adjusted the large scope, a night vision variant jury-rigged by the courier using a varmint rifle night vision scope and some electronics out of Cerulean Robotics in Freeside. Peering through again, he saw Legion soldiers, some sleeping in their tents, while others peered into the darkness with binoculars trying to see any unwanted people moving in the dark. Too bad for them Boone was not moving. The courier on the other hand had left him ten minutes ago. Going where however, Boone did not know.

Placing his hand on the grip, he lined up the head of a Legion scout, looking straight at him with binoculars in the dark. After a second, his finger brushed the trigger. A second later he squeezed. Click!

"Boom," he whispered.

"Headshot," said the courier as he lay down prone next to Boone. Boone opened his other eye just in time to see the courier materialise out of thin air. The flying robot that the courier often referred to as "ED-E" turned towards him, but continued to hover low as the courier had ordered.

"Where were you?"

"Went to check out the cliff overlooking the cove."

"And?"

"We're shifting to that. Good as this position is, I think the other one might be a bit better. The people in the cage would be out of your line of fire too."

The courier grabbed his duffel bag. Boone did the same, taking up the .50 calibre rifle as well. They moved through the darkness slowly, leaving nothing to chance as they went up to the cliff overlooking Cottonwood Cove. The instant they got there, Boone went prone, setting up the large rifle again.

"I think I prefer this spot too," he said simply.

"Good. I'm going to come in from the westside, north of the main road and head around to those cabins. From their we'll see what happens. Start with the three-oh-eight. ED-E stick close to Boone."

The eyebot beeped its confirmation of the orders.

Boone said nothing and assembled the .308 next to the .50, finishing by putting on the silencer and setting up the bipod. While looking through the scope, he kept his other eye open, watching as the courier prepared for the fight.

The courier opened his duffel bag. Boone saw the metal nametag, the courier kept attached to the bag with the name "ISAAC" in capital letters. He remembered when the courier had made them and attached them to the bag.

Isaac removed the First Recon Beret that Boone had given him, rolling it neatly and placing it in the bag. He then removed the NCR Ranger headgear that went with the armour he was already wearing, a helmet and gas mask with working night vision and a built-in two way radio that he had attuned to a radio Boone had. He took up the marksman carbine they had found in an irradiated vault, a sleek weapon with a variable scope and camouflage suited more for a forest. He fitted the silencer he had made after he stole the Gun Runner's blueprints. Then he grabbed the pump-action shotgun Boone had seen him come back to the Lucky 38 with after he disappeared with the Deathclaw eggs they had grabbed. The stock was wrapped in cloth, in an effort to keep the small bell hanging from the stock from ringing as he moved. Boone constantly told him to remove the bell, but Isaac always told him it was special.

With everything loaded, Boone watched as the courier disappeared into the night, leaving his duffel bag next to Boone. Boone loaded the .308 in the silence of the night, the refined and trained clicking of the sniper rifle as he loaded it being the only sound present.

"Comm check," he heard Isaac say through the radio's earpiece.

"Check," Boone responded.

"Copy."

Boone looked for the courier, to no avail. However he kept so silent and invisible was beyond him, not even kicking up dust as he moved.

"Overwatch."

"Explorer moving up on your left," Boone stated, the reticule hovering on the Legionary's skull.

"Got him. Lines?"

Boone changed the scope's magnification to see if anyone was watching. "None," he said after a second. By the time Boone looked back to the Legionary, he was being dragged behind the building. He watched as the courier moved the binoculars that had dropped from the dead man's hands.

"Moving."

Boone heard a low gurgle come over the comm as the courier killed a Legionary behind the building out of his line of sight. He scanned for targets.

"Open ground between me and the tents," he heard Isaac state.

"No one. I got no sight on the tents."

"I got a few sleeping spread out in the tents. Seven," he said, completing his count.

Boone scanned and saw a Legionary moving towards the cage behind the office. He produced a key and opened the gate. A second later, he pulled a girl from the cage, kicking and screaming. He saw him swing his hand as though hitting someone and then pull his .44 on someone else, but not firing.

"Shit," he heard the courier say over the comm. "Going loud. Five seconds."

Boone rolled right, lining up on the .50 calibre rifle. Boone saw a shadow, Isaac, running around the building across open ground to head off the Legionary instead of coming up behind him. The courier passed the stairs leading up to another room of the office building and the door that Boone could see from his side.

The Legionary reached the corner, dragging the struggling girl behind him by the hair. Suddenly he was on the ground, blood and teeth spewing from his mouth. There was a blast, almost like flame, coming from the mouth of a fire gecko as the courier shot him with the shotgun. The girl screamed, as the courier pushed her back to the cage, materialising as he did.

"Party time," the courier said into the comm, pumping the shotgun.

A Legionary came barrelling out of the upstairs room, in full armour, an officer's armour. Boone took the shot quickly, missing. A hole appeared where the hand crafted .50 calibre shot hit the wall. Boone reloaded the bolt, and fired at a Legionary who came out of a tent, sending him flying as the bullet lifted off the ground.

An explosion erupted by the tents, no doubt the result of one of Isaac's grenades. Boone heard the shotgun in the distance. A Legionary flew into his view after taking a shell to the chest.

"Pier," the courier said.

Boone turned to shoot the men running from the pier, racking the bolt quickly and sending them into the water like dolls thrown from the hands of a child. Boone reloaded the rifle smoothly and turned back to the courier. He had switched to the Marksman Carbine, firing at two Legionaries hiding between some of the cabins. Boone took aim and fired, putting a single round through both of them, leaving a blood red mist in the air where they were.

The Legion officer who had burst out of the upstairs room was moving in on the courier quickly, ducking left and right in an attempt to avoid Boone's fire. He closed on the courier who turned too late to take a shot. The only thing he could do was avoid the officer's gladius as he collided with him, knocking him off his feet.

The courier's rifle fell to the ground, as he rolled back using the momentum from the fall to kick the man over his head. The courier rose, pulling his combat knife instantly in his left hand, and moving as the Legionary recovered. As the two danced around each other, dodging and swinging, Boone felled two more Legionaries who came sprinting in from a distance, probably Explorers on patrol.

He turned back to see the courier barely dodge a swing only to spin and get in close enough to drive his combat knife through the man's throat. Blood spewed from the man's neck as the courier removed the knife.

"Clear?" the courier asked breathing deeply.

Boone scanned as the courier pulled his pistol and took up cover by the office. "Clear," Boone said.

He saw the courier visibly relax through the rifle scope as he picked up the Marksman Carbine and put in a fresh magazine. He then reloaded the shotgun, the bell ringing as he did so. Boone started packing up his stuff. The courier released the people captured as slaves for the Legion, telling them to grab some weapons and supplies from the dead Legion soldiers for the journey. He then returned to Boone on the cliff who had finished disassembling and storing the .308 and the .50 calibre.

Isaac grabbed his duffel bag, pulling off the combat helmet, and they descended to the raft in silence. As they put their things on the raft, Boone turned to him.

"You know this will probably be the last boat we ever take."

Isaac turned to him and smirked. "The last the Legion will ever see too," he remarked.

Boone found himself almost cracking a smile at that. Almost.

Boone rowed first, as the courier removed a few small arms rounds from the combat vest, then got some explosives ready. A mist descended upon them as they drifted towards fortification hill.

The sun would soon rise. It was time to strike. They drifted in the mist, laying prone on the raft, eyes on their scopes.

"Two," Boone stated. "One on the pier, one farther up."

"Target the one farther up. Gimme twenty seconds," the courier said, placing the combat helmet on his head.

"What are you..." He did not finish the question as the courier had already vanished into the water. Boone targeted the one closer to the gate and reduced the magnification on the scope so he could see the other.

The Legionary on the pier suddenly fell face first into the water. Boone took the shot at the other, as blood pooled in the water where the Legionary fell in, or rather pulled in. The courier, cloaked with his Stealth Boy pulled himself out of the water to the side of the pooling blood. Boone rowed the raft up to the pier where the courier tied it off.

They grabbed everything they could carry out of the duffel bags and then slung them over their shoulders. Boone shouldered the .308 rifle. He would not have to worry about its size since the courier would be pointman.

Isaac's shotgun's bell rung lightly as he slung it over his shoulder. He flipped the Marksman Carbine to three-round burst, another element he had added to the weapon after stealing the Gun Runner's blueprints. They made their way up the hill slowly, making sure to keep their distance from each other. ED-E hovered behind Boone in silence, staying out of his sight lines.

The gate to Caesar's fort was massive. A large wooden monstrosity lashed together with ropes similar to the makings of the raft they had been on not moments earlier, except much larger. The courier, lowered his carbine and reached into the duffel bag with his left hand. From it, he produced a mini-nuke, wired with a small brick of C-4 and a detonator.

Letting the carbine fall to his side, he motioned Boone to step back, then banged on the door with his hand. He pulled on the large handle, opening the left door, just enough to throw in the mini nuke bomb while turning to run and pulling out the detonator. He triggered it as he and Boone hid behind a rock.

The explosion seemed to shake the foundation of the hill, a triumphant blast heralding the arrival of angels of death to Caesar's camp. As the mushroom of the explosion faded from the air, the courier jumped out, bolting for the destroyed gate. The instant he was through the gate he was shooting, dropping Legionaries as they came scrambling to see what was happening.

Boone found a few targets farther up the hill, finishing a clip quickly and reloading. The eyebot fired at a Legionary who came running at him from the left, causing him to fall to the ground, with burning holes in his chest.

The courier took cover at gate leading farther up the hill, occasionally popping out to take fire at charging Legionaries. Boone took cover across from him. A thrill rushed through him. There were plenty of Legionaries here to kill. Boone took a shot, dropping another, suddenly Isaac was moving, a blur ahead of his original position. He ducked under a machete and brought his knee into Legionary's chest. The Legionary doubled over as Isaac brought his knife down in the back of the man's skull, while still holding the Marksman Carbine in his right hand.

Instead of replacing his blade he kept it in his left hand, holding it with his pinky and ring finger as he steadied his rifle and fired. A Legionary with a blond mohawk and wearing sunglasses charged him. The courier hopped back, out of the arc of the swing, holding his weapon closely to his chest. The Legionary tried to reverse the swing with a backhand. Isaac stopped it with the rifle and stabbed the man just above the armour in the throat.

Boone, who had been sniping Legionaries as they came out of the upper gate, saw it too late as something jumped onto the courier's back. The courier instinctively stabbed at the person on his back and threw him off. By the time he noticed it was one of the children the Legion was training it was too late.

Boone and the courier hesitated, looking at the figure of the young boy, wearing small Legionary armour bleeding out at the courier's feet. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, as bullets pinged all around the courier from above. The courier took a shot to the shoulder that was absorbed by his armour, knocking him off balance. Boone watched as time returned to its normal pace as the courier, turned on the spot and started shooting.

Bodies began dropping from the top of the hill. Eventually the shooting stopped and Boone saw as they closed the upper gate. The courier ran up in an attempt to stop them, but was too late as he heard the large bar come down to lock the gate. The courier reached into his duffel bag and produced his only other mini-nuke bomb. He spun, holding it in front of him as he got the momentum to throw it over the gate. He walked back down the hill, flexing his left arm as he did so.

A few shouts of alarm erupted from the other side of the gate as he triggered the explosive. The gate blew off its hinges sending splintering wood and metal shrapnel everywhere. The courier did not even let the smoke get close to clearing this time as he rushed through the now open gate, his shotgun in hand.

Boone heard a mixture of sounds that gave him great pleasure as he reached the gate: the screams of dying Legionaries, the pumping of the courier's shotgun, the firing of the courier's shotgun, and, ironically, the insane ringing of the bell hanging from the shotgun's stock.

"Reloading" he heard the courier say, watching him walk through the flames and smoke of the burning tents as he slid shell after shell into the shotgun's tube, like a dark shadow. Boone took his shots, killing a few of the Legion's mongrels as well as some Legionaries. Hell, they were all mongrels as far as he was concerned.

At some point it became a repeating exercise. The courier would gun down nearby Legionaries with his shotgun and reload as Boone shot others running in from a distance. The courier would also throw some of the incendiary grenades he found, sending screaming burning Legionaries into Boone's sights where he finished them off.

By the time the Legionaries stopped coming, the sun had risen, casting the shadow of the black smoke across the dam. Boone suddenly heard the courier laughing loudly, almost maniacally.

"That's a first," he heard Isaac say through the laughter.

"What is?"

"I'm out of five-five-six and I got three buckshot shells left and they're in the shotgun." The courier pulled out some yellow shells and started reloading the shotgun. "Luckily, I've got some coin shots," he said. Boone could almost see the mischievous smirk behind the gas mask.

"Legion money is good for something after all," Boone said.

"I'm almost a little sad we're nearly finished, because then I won't have any Legionaries to get those coins off of. Time to finish what we came here to do."

They walked up Caesar's tent. Of the insane number of Legionaries they had felled, none had come from this tent, so whoever was in there was still in there. They stopped on either side of the tent flap. Isaac pulled a grenade.

"Last one," he said, pulling the pin and throwing it into the tent.

There was an audible curse in the tent followed by the grenade's explosion. Boone and the courier burst in guns blazing. The courier blew open the chest of one of the Legionaries just to the left of the tent's entrance. His body collided with the brazier in the corner, setting the tent on fire. The courier turned as Boone put a round through the skull of Vulpes Inculta, the man who had invited him here, whose lifeless corpse backflipped.

The courier pumped, fired. Three more of Caesar's guards. Boone fired. Two more. Isaac fired again. The shot missed as the Legionary ducked left at the last second. The Legionary swung as Boone fired a shot at the final of Caesar's guards. The courier took the punch to the chest, the amplifying weapon on the Legionary's hands causing the pain to be insanely immense. The courier fell backwards. The Legionary turned towards Boone and sprinted. Boone fired and missed.

The courier pulled his .45 and emptied the clip in the Legionary's back as he was about to collide with Boone. He recovered and looked over to Caesar's empty seat. He reloaded the pistol and holstered it, picking up the shotgun. Blood led from Caesar's seat into the tent behind him with the bed.

Boone and Isaac walked into the room nonchalantly, where Caesar was pulling himself onto the bed, bleeding profusely from the leg. Boone figured he may have taken some of the courier's buckshot earlier when he had missed the last Legionary. There was a machine with multiple arms, with what looked like medical instrument, at the foot of the bed.

"Auto-Doc," Isaac stated. "A rare day when you see one of these," the courier said, running his finger across it.

"Damn you," Caesar said.

"We're already damned, so try harder," Isaac said. Isaac put the man in the bed and grabbed rope from one of the loops in the tent, tying him up and to the bed. "When this dumb war is over I'm going to head east. I'm going to kill every last one of your Legionaries, I'm going to burn every flag bearing the mark of the bull and quite frankly, I wish you could be there to see it."

Boone watched as Isaac did something on the Auto-Doc. The best he could tell it had to do with the thing's programming considering the multitude of lines of symbols and characters on the screen. The courier finished with a final tap, and the Auto-Doc wheeled forward a bit then began cutting open Caesar's chest. The courier turned and walked away. Boone watched for a second as the gruesome sight unfolded.

"Thumbs down bitch," he said as Caesar choked to death on his own blood.

The entrance to the tent had burned down. The courier sat on the ground in front of where the entrance had been.

"You want to tell me what that was about?" Boone inquired. He knew the courier did not like the Legion, but he did not expect that sort of promise.

"Only if you tell me about Bitter Springs," Isaac grunted, pulling up his gloved hand with blood on it. "Didn't feel that one."

"I'll think about it," Boone said, crouching to help him remove the round.

After bandaging up the courier's wounds they headed down the hill, looting weapons and freeing slaves as they went. They stopped at the corpse of the boy the courier had killed as people ran past them. A woman stopped and looked at the boy's corpse dropping to her feet and crying uncontrollably.

"Boone, there are things that happen in our lives that we can never recover from. Some we do, while others happen to us. Sometimes I wonder why I don't just end it. We fight for an end to this," - he said referring to the dead child - "at what cost?"

Boone looked at the courier. He had removed the helmet and had a distant look in his eyes. Boone said nothing.

"I'm going to find a shovel," Isaac said.


End file.
